


Keep True

by Pereprin



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: A feel-bad love story for the 18th century, F/M, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Slow Burn, there's a plot in there somewhere
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 09:20:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6605368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pereprin/pseuds/Pereprin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Anna Strong discovers she does, in fact, have someone to lose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep True

**Author's Note:**

> It's short and uneventful, but I needed to just start, or it would never happen. More tags and warnings to come as this hot nonsense gets underway.

" _Oh, the price that we pay_

 _For the lives we betrayed._ "

\- Mechina

 

Selah Strong is a dead man. Not in the physical sense, but where king and country are concerned, he is very much deceased. Or would be, should the red coats ever manage to lay hands on him. No matter what fate befalls him, fair or ill, there would be no future - no life - for Selah Strong in Setauket.  
  
As bearer of the same tainted name, there would be little semblance of such for Anna Strong, either. The notion emboldened her, steeled her nerves each time she strung up a black petticoat. It was the thought that drove her to wager her life on this gamble called revolution. To the law, it’s treason.. But to Anna?  
  
It’s a matter of survival.

She thought herself quite the capable woman with her husband at her side, though she did not accord him credit for that self-reliance. No, even now, she believes herself to be made of stronger stuff than what some would call the frailty of womanhood. But there, in the suffocating haze of a tavern she once called her own, as she slops a damp rag over a puddle of sick, she feels as though her armor has been stripped away. Perhaps not the same armor safeguarding the fires of conviction that yet burn in her heart, but the ironclad defense of a husband’s authority. There were none to vouch for her in this new life, and so the mistress became a servant, forgotten and without a voice once more.

Anna was done believing that Abraham Woodhull could ever save her from this reality. Her future would be of her own making. That notion alone rankles her to the marrow, makes her scrub a bit harder and harder still until she feels the sharp prick of her own teeth piercing the soft flesh of her lower lip. She casts the sodden cloth into the bucket beside her and presses the dry back of her hand to her mouth. It comes away with a blot of crimson.

Bright crimson.

_The regulars pass in a stream of red, bayonets fixed and glinting in the light of the midday sun. Anna stands in the shelter of the tavern doorway, clutching her shawl tightly to her. She was always careful to school her features, to look upon them with some measure of feigned admiration. Or, if she could not muster it, as was most days, she took care to show nothing at all._

_Yet she falters when she sees the Major among them, bedecked in his colors and sash, impeccably presented as always. His wide, thin lips that spare her the most fleeting, ghost of a smile as he passes. So subtle that she thinks she has conjured the image in her mind. She forgets her dread in that moment, and finds herself struggling to quell a rising heart as it beats into her throat._

_She yet wonders if it’s all a ruse, or some cruel flight of fancy designed by fate to ensure she never finds a reprieve from this aching loneliness. She wonders if the hope she finds blooming within her is indiscriminate, and if it is, in fact, merely the idea of him that has her thoughts tied up in knots._

_Anna follows him with her eyes, gaze fixed on the back of his silver laced tricorn. He addresses an adjutant to his right, the two fully engrossed in military matters as she imagines herself standing before him, confessing to each crime she has committed against all he stands for. She wonders what he might say then, just before he condemns her to hang._

_But she stands silent, tucking an errant lock of hair back into her cap as a strong sea breeze sweeps through the town. She retreats inside, where she is greeted with the slurred demands of off-duty soldiers and drunkards. The work keeps her hands busy, but not her mind. No - her mind is otherwise occupied._

The moment fades back into memory, and the taste of copper on her tongue compels her to return to the present. The sunlight wanes through the windows, and she rises unsteadily from the floor, collects her bucket, and makes her way to the larder. 

There is work to be done.

**Author's Note:**

> So I could not for the life of me remember Anna's legal standing by the end of season 2, and what she no longer owns, or is allowed to... sort of own. So I'm fudging it a little. Ugh. Please let me know what you think before I'm overcome with regret and bury this fic.


End file.
